Big 12 Basketball Tournament site debate sharpens as Kansas City deal runs through 2031
The big 12 basketball tournament remains committed to Kansas City's T-Mobile Arena through 2031, a contract extension that has reignited calls for the league to rotate the event around its now national footprint.
Why Kansas City still holds the contract
Commissioner Brett Yormark last year extended the contract to keep both the men's and women's basketball championships at T-Mobile Arena through 2031, and he said the league "needed to double down on our commitment to this community. " The extension continued a run that began under Yormark's predecessor, Bob Bowlsby, who kept the tournament in Kansas City since 2010, a span that has favored nearby programs such as Kansas, Iowa State and Kansas State.
Big 12 Basketball Tournament faces geographic squeeze
Greg Hansen argues that Kansas City no longer fits the league the way it did when the conference was a Midwest circuit. The Big 12 now includes Arizona, ASU, BYU, Utah, Colorado, West Virginia, Cincinnati and UCF, stretching the conference almost 2, 000 miles from one end to the other; Hansen notes Colorado is roughly a 600-mile drive from Kansas City's campus, evidence he says the site is inconvenient for many fans.
Calls to rotate like the Big Ten and a 2035 Dallas proposal
Hansen points to the Big Ten's rotation — slated for Chicago this year, Indianapolis next year and Las Vegas in 2028, with past stops in New York City, Washington D. C. and Minneapolis — as a model for serving a geographically diverse membership. He urges Yormark to create a similar rotation plan for the Big 12 Tournament after 2032 and suggests the American Airlines Center in Dallas as a possible 2035 site, saying Kansas City should return to the rotation only then.
Other conference championships and facility limits
Hansen uses other Big 12 championship locations to bolster his point: the conference staged the 2025-26 men's and women's swimming championships in Greensboro, N. C., 1, 797 miles from the UA's Hillenbrand Aquatic Center because 10 of the league's 16 schools that sponsor swimming lack a suitable pool for roughly 400 swimmers and divers. He also notes track and field will be at Arizona's Drachman Stadium, baseball at Surprise, Arizona's spring training complex used by the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals, softball at the USA Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City, and gymnastics in Salt Lake City, home of the Utah Utes.
Hansen's column frames the central choice for league leadership plainly: maintain the Kansas City commitment that Yormark defended with the 2031 extension, or design a regional rotation to spread travel burdens and ticket access across the conference's expanded geography. The contract keeps the tournament in Kansas City through 2031; Hansen urged a rotation beginning after 2032 and proposed the American Airlines Center in Dallas for 2035.
